Jupiter's Trojan Asteroids

Jupiter has a large population of Trojan Asteroids orbiting its Lagrange 4 and Lagrange 5 points. The asteroids orbiting the L4 point are known as the Greek camp, while the ones orbiting the L5 point are known as the Trojan camp. The simulation jupitertrojans.gsim contains 872 Greek and Trojan asteroids, the total population known as of 2006. Because of the large number, it is not recommended that you run it with Gravity Simulator 2.0. Rather, visit the message board and get the latest Beta version and use the Preferences menu to set the "Do Events" interval to 1, or the simulation may freeze.

When you run this simulation, try turning on the trails and set the rotating frame period to Jupiter's period in the View menu to watch the asteroids trace tadpoles around Jupiter's L4 and L5 points.

Discuss this simulation on Gravity Simulator's web forum